


Call of the Sea

by Arnica



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-27
Updated: 2012-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-30 04:51:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/327931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arnica/pseuds/Arnica





	Call of the Sea

WARNINGS; traditional type fairytale aka, angsty

***

When Jack looks back at it, there's an obvious pattern. A timeline so clear he almost wants to take his vortex manipulator and toss it in the bay, because obviously he doesn't deserve to wear it. A _real_ Time Agent would have put two and two together and gotten two to the power of ten as was proper. A _good_ agent wouldn't have let it all go to hell like this; the trail of blood drops from the archives to the Sea Queen's dock, the slow creep of blood from the graze wound slipping across his bicep, and his team walking around the wreck of the Hub in a daze. Owen is still standing in the kitchen doorway, clenching his fists as he stares at the broken remains of the coffee machine. He hasn't said much since Jack knocked the gun from his hand, but he looks up as Jack goes past, gripping the sleeve of the grey wool coat to halt the captain.

"I thought it was possessing him Jack. I really did." His mouth tries to wobble and Owen pauses, sucks a deep breath in a firms his face into something ernst and solemn. "I thought I was _saving_ him."

"You didn't do anything wrong Owen. Just...get the girls and go home. I'll deal with the paperwork."

He watches them go from behind the glass walls of his office, Tosh and Gwen seeming to be the only thing holding each other up as Owen steers them towards the cog door with a hand on the small of each of their backs.

"I just don't understand, why did he _run_ from us?" Gwen's plaintif questiong echoes up through the empty air, drifting in past the open door to Jack's office.

"Because that's what they do when they find their skin, Gwen." Toshiko's voice is soft and wet. "They run home to the sea or die trying."

***

He's been staring at the blank incident report under his fingers for almost an hour now and has yet to make a mark on the page. It's not like there's going to be a rush for it. There's no one waiting to file it away in the archives, no tower to report the loss of one of his team to, although he's sure Archie would love another species to add to the Torchwood House library. He's jittery from adrenaline and has his mouth open to call for Ianto and a coffee before snapping it shut so suddenly he almost catches the tip of his tongue between his teeth.

A report hasn't been this hard in _years_ , not since the turn of the century. Jack kicks the desk as he stands up and throws his coat on. The wound under the sloppy patch job he's done pulls with the movement, a sharp sting from the boy's last wild shot as he backed himself away from the base of the water tower towards the belly of the Hub, silvery black bundle clutched tightly to his chest.

_'The next one is in your head Jack. Just let me go, I just want to go home.'_

__The secure backup servers for the tower are buried somewhere deep in Mainframe's AI and Jack calls them up on his tablet as he sits on a bench overlooking the bay fifteen minutes later, sipping at really bad coffee from the closest all night place.

There are files on Ianto Jones, far more than the ones Jack pulled from the remains of the regular servers when the boy first showed up in Cardiff hunting Torchwood down, and they're far more accurate and detailed. There are slightly aged pictures of a massive Grey seal trapped in a net; it's sharp canines bared and whiskers forward as it bellows and thrashes, a perfectly straight white line of fur running from the tip of it's nose down the underside to the edge of it's flukes, and then of the man he knows as Ianto Jones tangled and screaming in the same net, arm reaching desperately for the silky pelt being moved off camera.

He skips as much of the medical files as he can. He's been the focus of curious Torchwood scientists before and can imagine fairly well what the reports will detail, but some lines can't be skimmed fast enough to keep from burning themselves into his mind. Jack could have died, kind of, a happy man never knowing that the distance between skin and subject did not affect the subject's reaction when the pelt was harmed. He does wish though, very desperately, to know how the man escaped his cage in the cells and freed himself the day the tower fell. How he knew his coat was buried in the archives of the Hub when Jack himself had no idea he was the unwilling host to a Selkie's skin.

Out in the bay something catches his eye under the moonlight. Just a ripple among waves, a darker black shadow on top of the inky sea. There's nothing there when he blinks again, dropping his paper cup to the ground and rushing towards the railings, but for a moment Jack would have sworn the sleek head of a seal was watching him.

***

The report says nothing about the way Ianto looked, half dressed and wide eyed in the middle of the deepest recesses of the archives, a scarred and dusty seal skin wrapped in his arms like a lost child. It doesn't mention watching his eyes flicker from startled blue to the inky wet blackness of a seal in the moments before he turned and ran. The desperate chase through the Hub where no one wanted to shoot is left out, as well as the way he lifted the professional coffee machine as if it weighed nothing, sending it soaring safely (deliberately?) over the team's head to make them duck and scatter when they cornered Ianto in the kitchen. Not a word is written about the bullet Jack took to the shoulder from a shooter so good it had to be deliberate. Jack definately doesn't mention the ragged gagging sound Ianto made when Owen raised his gun and very carefully, very neatly, put three bullets through the center of the pelt. There's nothing about the way those slick black eyes turned blue again or the blood on his lips as he tried to smile at them, staggering down the corridors towards the Sea Queen's dock or how by the time they got there, there was nothing but a trail of bright red drops on the floor and a monsterously large bull seal leaving a bloody trail on the dock as it rolled into the sea and vanished.

Instead, the report reads only that archivist and office manager Ianto Jones, born ( _found/kidnapped/stolen_ ) August Ninteenth Nineteen hundred and Eighty-three was wounded under mysterious circumstances and is missing in action, presumed dead.

***

Trope: Selkie Wife/Husband


End file.
